


Dead but Dreaming

by Krynn



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Cthulhu Mythos, Dark, Experimental Style, Literary References & Allusions, Lovecraftian, M/M, Mental Instability, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Surreal, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25885966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krynn/pseuds/Krynn
Summary: After the cliff, Will Graham dreams of the sea. It dreams along with him.Something watches. Something waits.Post-series Cthulhu Mythos fusion.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Dead but Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

> See end notes for full content warnings.
> 
> Thanks to the Too Far Out Discord for looking this over.
> 
> Title from the Draconian song "Cthulhu Rising".

Will comes to on a grey, rocky shore. The water that laps at ( _into_ ) his face is glacial (probably what woke him up), and he drags himself further up the beach, leaves a trail of blood behind him that leaches away into the sand and sea. _The propitiation for our sins_ , he thinks, hazy and trembling, mind fogged over by the grey veil of exhaustion, half-formed memories and near-forgotten associations ( _forgive us our debts)_ conjured up by blood loss and pain, pain, _pain_.

He rolls onto his side, spits out blood and salt (the sea, rushing into his mouth, rushing into _him_ , there's no air, just the sea), and tries to pull himself together.

He can tell that something about him has changed, but that's not anything new, is it? He's been _changed_ so many times, now, _changed_ by the way his vision had darkened to the sounds of Abigail's death (drowned in her own blood), _changed_ by the way his hands felt as they wrapped around Randall Tier's ( _Hannibal, smiling_ ) throat, _changed_ by the way it felt to put ten bullets in Garrett Jacob Hobbs ( _righteous_ ), and before ( _before_ ), by how it felt to be rejected ( _too unstable, have you considered teaching?_ ), how it felt to watch as a good man died because his useless hands couldn't pull the trigger (look at him now), how it felt to cower in the corner behind the old threadbare sofa (seven years old and rail-thin from hunger) and pray, pray to a God that didn't answer, that tonight Daddy would drink too much and fall asleep and not find him and not get the belt and-

Well. He can tell that something about him has changed.

He pushes it aside (probably the blood loss), pushes himself upright, and starts looking for Hannibal. Little waves dance around his feet, numbing them to the bite of the sharp rocks below.

* * *

Somehow, he finds him. Hannibal lies motionless on the sand, another blood offering trickling out into the surf around him, but Will's shaking hands find clammy skin, and, beneath that, a thready pulse. The waves push Hannibal further up the shore ( _a gift_ , he thinks), and Will nearly sobs with relief.

Somehow, he manages to get them both back up the cliff.

Somehow, the car he finds works, the keys tumbling out of the visor when he opens the door to lay Hannibal (unmoving, unconscious, but _still alive_ ) out on the back seat.

Somehow, he is not pulled over for breaking every speeding law on the books.

Somehow, his directionless driving finds him an abandoned cabin, far from any other traces of civilization.

Somehow, _somehow_ , the Dragon's bullet has not damaged any of Hannibal's organs.

Will does not ask any questions. (He knows that God wouldn't answer them anyway. He learned that when he was a child.)

* * *

Finally, when Hannibal's wound is stitched closed and bandaged (somehow, there is a first aid kit), Will steps into the cabin's bathroom and washes the sea (a baptism of salt and blood) from his skin.

It feels like a loss. Will does not know why.

* * *

After clumsily seeing to his own injuries, he collapses into the bed next to Hannibal's still-unconscious form and lets sleep take him. He does not pray.

When he dreams, he dreams of the darkness beneath the waves. Something is watching him.

* * *

He knows that he had aimed them for the rocks.

* * *

When he surfaces from the depths of sleep, he glances over and sees Hannibal (a shock, for a moment between one breath and the next, that it is not Molly- poor, sweet Molly) looking at him, eyes glazed with pain and exhaustion and the look of a man who does not know if what he's seeing is real (and isn't _that_ a look Will knows intimately).

Will smiles a smile he does not entirely feel, gets up (and oh, his ribs are _definitely_ cracked), and goes to make them something to eat.

Somehow, the cabin is fully stocked. (Probably owned by rich people, Will tells himself.)

* * *

_Jack probably assumes we're dead_ , Will (hopes) thinks.

God isn't listening, but Will half-prays anyway (probably for the first time in decades, desperate, _begging_ ), to anyone (any _thing_ ) that will listen. _Please. Please let them think we're dead._

Three days later, the little radio he found (somehow, it turns on) announces with a faint hiss and a crackle that they have been declared dead, lost to the waves and exsanguination. He can feel himself start to smile at Hannibal, the first _real_ smile since the cliff (and the sea), maybe even the first real smile for a long time before that-

“-Graham died a hero,” says the radio in Jack's voice, weary and solemn and pained ( _grieving_ ), and then Will isn't smiling any more.

He doesn't know what his face is doing, but it isn't a smile.

He shuts the radio off. He leaves the room. He can feel Hannibal's eyes follow him the entire way.

* * *

That night, Will sits on the cabin's threadbare sofa and drinks himself into a stupor.

Through the numbness and the fog (and the echoes of the roaring sea), he hears Hannibal, bedridden, _defenseless_ , call out for him. His hands flex. They should have died (why didn't they die?) on the cliff.

They should have died.

They should have _died_.

The gun Will found alongside the radio (somehow, it is fully loaded) glints up at him dully.

It's in his hand and he doesn't know how it got there, and he's in the doorway to the bedroom and he doesn't know how _he_ got there, and Hannibal's looking up at him and Will can see through the cracks in his mask to the man (just a man) below and that man is-

He's-

Hannibal's _afraid_ -

The world goes dark around him. He feels himself falling and he goes to (welcomes) the frozen embrace of the sea without protest.

* * *

He wakes up in the morning with a raging hangover and a light bruise (just one more for the collection) on his cheek.

They never talk about it. (Probably for the best.)

* * *

Somehow, their wounds do not become infected.

* * *

When he sleeps, he dreams as vividly as he had when he was sick with encephalitis and his brain was melting in his skull.

The angles, in the fractal dream world, are never quite right.

(Somehow, they _feel_ right.)

* * *

Somehow, they escape the country.

The boat that he steals (somehow, no one notices them sneak into the marina) gets them to Cuba two days ahead of schedule, as if the sea itself parted before them ( _Moses' hand stretched out over the waters_ ).

Will doesn't dwell on the matter.

* * *

The first time they kill together, blood as black and ichorous in the moonlight as he remembers, Will hangs the body upside down and burns it ( _a burnt offering for the Lord your God_ ) and something deep inside him stirs.

“Your Becoming,” Hannibal says, approving, if not a bit curious about Will's choice of symbolism.

As Will thinks back (back to the ghost stories he heard as a child in Louisiana, back to the old wives' tales of things that dwell in the bayous and the men that danced with them), he isn't quite so sure.

Hannibal doesn't ask Will outright for an explanation, and Will doesn't give him one.

* * *

One day, Will notices that the stray dogs he passes by are afraid of him.

It doesn't bother him as much (as it would have, before the cliff, before the fall, before the sea) as he thinks it should.

* * *

More and more often, now, Will finds himself waking in the middle of the night. The dreams aren't the sweat-soaked nightmares that he once had (that Hannibal had once given him), but they drive him nonetheless from the bed that he and Hannibal share.

He always finds himself walking down to their little beach and wading into the night-dark sea. The water, warmed by the summer heat, feels wrong ( _wrong_ ) around his legs.

* * *

The dreams become more and more vivid, more and more _real_. The sea swallows him whole, and he descends into the black abyss, deeper and deeper until the great City fills his sight, angles twisted and wrong and _oh-so-beautiful_ -

He hears the Dreamer, now. The words are just beyond his grasp, but the Voice sings to him in its own way.

* * *

Will can tell that Hannibal is growing unsure around him. Will knows that he kills far, far more than Hannibal wishes or deems prudent (probably rightly, too, given that they're international fugitives), but Hannibal's displeasure seems so insignificant, not when something in his mind (something that _is_ _not him_ ) is rumbling distant approval like tectonic plates shifting beneath the ocean floor.

He kills and hangs and burns, laws and morals thrown aside, free and wild and beyond good and evil.

Somehow, they are never caught.

Will has started praying again.

* * *

( _This_ time, his God answers.)

* * *

He knows that he aimed them for the rocks.

He knows he did not miss.

* * *

Sometimes, when he goes down to the too-warm shore in the too-bright night, driven by a voice as deep as the sea ( _the Lord called Samuel, and Samuel answered 'here I am.'_ ), he sits and looks up at the stars.

Somehow, they look wrong.

* * *

Will can tell that Hannibal is concerned (probably too late) about him. He overhears phone calls in languages he does not know, scraps of half-heard conversations flitting about at the edge of his awareness, but he pays them no mind. There is nothing wrong with him.

He tries to explain this to Hannibal ( _See?_ he asks, the ghost of Garret Jacob Hobbs speaking with his lips, with his sea-kissed mouth), but it only serves to make Hannibal even more worried.

Will keeps the Dreamer (and his prayers) to himself.

* * *

He knows that he aimed them for the rocks.

He knows he did not miss.

Somehow, they are whole.

* * *

Will wakes up one day, and knows that he _cannot_ stay there any longer (probably for the best, given how many victims they've butchered). Hannibal protests, worried about drawing unnecessary attention, but Will coaxes him into agreeing to the move.

There is another fight (short and vicious), once Hannibal sees where, exactly, Will wants to live, but in the end, Will wins. (Hannibal cannot survive separation, after all. Will uses what weapons he has.)

A week later, they leave Cuba and head for the southernmost coasts of Chile. It isn't perfect (the stars are still _broken_ , after all) but it's so much better than before.

* * *

When they reach Patagonia, the land clutched tight in the bony grasp of winter, the Voice is so much clearer. Will occasionally makes out entire words now, the syllables twisted and serpentine and so utterly, _utterly_ alien.

He understands them perfectly. (The voice from his childhood, almost faded now, reminds him of _Pentecost._ )

Will does not ask any questions.

* * *

It's only a matter of time before Hannibal notices that Will's nocturnal visits to the ocean have become a nightly occurrence.

He's ripped from his observance of the malevolent stars by a gloved hand that lands on his bare shoulder and the distant sound of Hannibal's voice, filled with badly-concealed terror, saying something about the temperature and freezing to death.

“Really?” he asks, mind still half-sunken beneath the Pacific. He hadn't noticed. He feels fine.

Somehow, he does not have frostbite.

* * *

They don't live particularly close to any of the cities (per Will's wishes), and the aching bite of the frozen air makes it even harder to find victims.

The Dreamer doesn't mind, but _Will_ does.

* * *

Hannibal begins locking them in at night. Will finds out the hard way, when he tries to leave and go to his nightly communion with the sea. By the time Will, still fuzzy from his visions of the many-angled City, manages to unlock the door, Hannibal is awake ( _probably wasn't sleeping_ , Will realizes) and is at his side.

“I have to-” Will starts. He is not sure how the sentence will end.

Wordlessly, Hannibal takes Will's arm and guides him back to their bed. When he wakes in the morning, he does not remember his dreams.

Hannibal looks- he looks _empty_ , Will thinks, like he has nothing left to give.

Will cannot find it in himself to care.

* * *

They catch and kill one victim, and Will hangs and burns her after Hannibal (probably relieved that Will is taking interest in something that isn't the ocean) has taken his prize. It helps, but the bottomless abyss the Dreamer has dug in his soul cannot be filled.

Will prays. (Hannibal has taken away everything else.)

* * *

That night, and the night after that, and the night after that, Hannibal keeps Will from the sea, from the womb of salt and cold that birthed him anew.

He feels like he is dying.

* * *

Hannibal has given up any pretense of secrecy (not that he could ever hide from Will), and now the phone conversations increase in both length and number. A great tension has left him, and he seems to have regained a modicum of his previous self. Will overhears a date (probably was smart not to tell Hannibal that Will spoke French), and he doesn't need to see that the dusty suitcases in the closet have been disturbed to know what Hannibal is planning.

* * *

Somehow, he knows what he must do.

* * *

He knows that he aimed them for the rocks.

He knows he did not miss.

Somehow, they are whole.

Somehow, he knows why.

* * *

Will does not ask any questions.

* * *

They are alone. Above them, the stars wheel and turn in their hateful dance.

“Will,” Hannibal begins quietly, lips already numb and blue from the cold, but Will cannot hear him. The Voice, strong as the deep currents, old as the echoing void, is the only thing that matters now, and it is pleased.

Perhaps Hannibal had been right- the hanging and burning might have been Will's idea after all, the stories of his youth serving as the template for his worship, rather than the true will of the Dreamer. This feels _right_ , right like nothing else has for so long now.

With fingers untouched by the freezing night, Will checks and tightens the zip-ties around Hannibal's bare wrists for the final time, deaf to the protests it elicits. Once he is satisfied with their integrity, he straightens and begins walking them both towards the hallowed, welcoming cold of the ocean.

As they reach the water, the icy surf laps at his feet, greeting him like a father greets a long-lost child. Next to him (too late, no _probably_ about it), Hannibal starts struggling in earnest ( _perhaps_ , Will thinks, from somewhere very far away, _he didn't think I would do it_ ), but the strength of Will's ancient God flows through him and he drags them both beneath the waves, towards the Dreamer and his City, towards _home_.

Somehow, he is happy.

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: this work contains brief, non-graphic references to child abuse, mentions of alcoholism, contemplation of suicide, and the non-graphic murder-suicide of the main characters.
> 
> I am delighted to come back from a 10-year fic hiatus with this piece. 
> 
> Constructive criticism is very much welcome. There is a _lot_ going on in this, so if you want clarification or just have any questions, please feel free to ask! I can also be reached at [my tumblr](krynnmeridia.tumblr.com).


End file.
